New Technologies, new pedagogies: Mobile learning in higher education

An insightful e-book by A.Herrington, J. Herrington and Jessica Mantei which delves deeper into the discussion of the usefulness of incorporating mobile devices in higher education. The chapter that I chose in addition to ‘Design Principles for Mobile learning’ is ‘Faculty development for new technologies: Putting mobile learning in the hands of the teachers’.

‘Faculty development for new technologies: Putting mobile learning in the hands of the teachers’ investigates the potential of two mobile devices, a smartphone and digital audio/video player. As faculty is usually hesitant to invest their time and energy into learning new technology, emphasis is put on the combination of practice and theory. Many successful faculty development activities move beyond the idea of ‘one-off’ workshops to integrate long term programs that focus on developing relationships and reflection as well as skill and knowledge development (Carew, Lefoe, and Bell & Armour 2008).

It was interesting to see twelve staff volunteers go through an action learning framework based on both formal and informal learning activities over six months and then implement their projects with students over the following twelve months. Five initial key understandings were required for implementation: Understanding of the theoretical framework and mobile learning, affordances of the technology at hand, identifying the new pedagogies, model the practice through authentic tasks and the reflection on the implications for the development of new pedagogies.

‘Design Principles for Mobile learning’ refer to characteristics of a planned learning design - what it should look like, or its procedure - how it should be developed (Van den Akker 1999). Such designs are not fixed. For example the summary of substantive and procedural elements of the findings of the project is presented in the form of a table in this chapter with emphasis on purpose, characteristics and methodology. While much has been learnt about the capabilities of the devices and appropriate designs for teaching and learning through this project, these ‘first generation, studies may well be insufficient to prompt the widespread uptake of mobile learning in higher education institutions (Traxler 2005).